Bromide Guy: Fools Who Use AI Foolishly
Every generation has its way of celebrating people who suffer the ill effects of their own idiocy. When I was younger, it was Faces of Death. In the early internet, it was the Darwin Awards. When The Onion hit its stride, a sister site emerged just to roast people who fell for Onion headlines.
The point is, clueless people aren’t new. They’ve always been here — people who lack the ability to contextualize information but somehow have the confidence to forge ahead without regard for simple concepts like cause and effect.
Which brings me to one of my new favorite subgenres of human stupidity: Fools Who Use AI Foolishly.
Case in point: a would-be dieter landed in the hospital after substituting table salt with sodium bromide — a move inspired, apparently, by ChatGPT.
This gentleman was supposedly college-educated, “inspired by his history of studying nutrition in college.” Concerned that most research focused on reducing sodium, not chloride, he asked a non-contextualized question:
“Hey, Chat. What can I use as a chlorine substitute?”
ChatGPT, likely doing its best pool-boy impression, responded: “Several chlorine alternatives exist for pool sanitation, including saltwater systems, bromine, ozone systems…”
And somewhere around “ozone systems,” our hero stopped listening. His eyes glazed over. Then came the Eureka moment: “Bromine!”
Credit card in hand, he hopped online in search of his miracle. And where do you find miracle health products? At Leslie’s Pool Supplies, of course. $34.99 plus tax.
Eight days later, he was on the road to health, sprinkling that shit on everything — eggs, potatoes, steak, cheesecake, Skittles. You name it. And pretty soon, Time itself grabbed the wheel, steering him gently toward the ER.
I like to imagine that he lost some weight along the way. That on day four, he woke up, looked in the mirror, and said, “Damn, I look pretty good today. Must’ve been all that salt.” And hopefully, maybe… he even felt better for a little bit. Before, you know. Before psychiatric paranoia took over.
Is there a lesson here? Maybe. Or maybe not. A hundred thousand years of humans has produced a hundred thousand years of humans doing stupid human shit.
If there is a moral, it’s this: before you follow AI advice to the letter, ask yourself one question — is this thing trying to season my food or shock my pool?
And honestly, if Darwin were alive today, he wouldn’t be writing about finches — he’d be running a blog called Shit AI Made Humans Do.
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Sources (as verified by my three college credits in “sciency stuff”):
“Man sought diet advice from ChatGPT and ended up with ‘bromide intoxication,’ which caused hallucinations and paranoia” — Live Science
Leisure Time Sodium Bromide 1 lb — Leslie’s Pool Supplies ($34.99 plus tax, miracle cures not included)
My vague memory of a chemistry class I mostly skipped in 1994.
